It made almost a quarter of page 30 in my paper today. We care far more about who is going to be the next England football manager.

We're replacing the one old navy ship we have down there with a new ship, and sending a prince to fly a rescue helicopter. We might send a nuclear submarine, although we might not as we might have one there already (we're not telling).

Meanwhile, Argentina and her neighbours have banned all Falkland's ships from their ports.

The Mail's Dominic Sandbrook has been posting some simply astonishing bilge over the last few months, in which a variety of far-fetched military disasters befall the UK, previously benign/irrelevant foreign politicians take on Bond-villain mannerisms, and everyone ends up in prison camps. Even the Duchess of Cambridge.

That's the stuff; tender morsels of paranoid rambling, filtered through a transparent gauze of rightwing propoganda via that... tone. That "look how calm I am in describing this, it's really a possibility, I'm not crazy, I JUST WANT YOU TO... no!, [shush] no, not crazy at all" tone.

That said, since Argentina don't seem to have a particularly compelling claim, it does appear to make sense for the 3000 inhabitants to continue their self-determined status as a British Overseas Territory.

oookeeyyy... The claim over Malvinas is a very old conflict, long before the war. And, yes, it has been used for political purposes mostly. But, imagine having a guy who lives in a big ass mansion, 5 blocks from where you live, claiming that, I don't know, your fence is his! "Oh, look, this piece of dirt is just this close from your territory, but is actually mine. Look at these dirty old papers, almost unreadable, they say I'm right!". So, yeha, the claim has been an issue among our population for over 100 years. Fact.

I think Argentina needs to leave us alone over this. We need the remnants of Imperial glory and if we lost the Falklands we'd all end up having some horrible national psychosexual breakdown.

I do hope you're joking.

It's funny. I don't have anything against most brittish people. Hell, most of my cultural shit I love and care comes from England... wich is, of course, the great latinamerican paradox of the 20th century and of this century. But I go ape about stuff llike this. I don't know, wasn't there an asian island wich was under british power not long ago, and that was ultimately given back to it's original "owners"??

Of course, the truth is, everyone here, too, doesn't gives a shit when it comes to think what would we do with the islands, IF we got it back?? Yeah, it's mostly a political issue, and that's what's most painful: some of us, here, do think that the claim is legitimate, but also know that our governments don't care about this matter any more than to get political leverage!!! And I belive the same happens in Britain. I mean, you wouldn't know anything about the islands if ther wasn't occassionally a mention about the matter once or twice a year. The rest of the time, it's "Big Brother" time on TV!!!

Okay, but what happens if Argentina gains control of the islands? Does it boot out a few thousand people who live there and own land there that they've either inherited or bought through legal means? That pretty much run their own government and infrastructure?

If there were an Argentine population that was being subjugated or disenfranchised somehow then I'd be with you, and if the people who lived there wanted independence, I'd be with them. But when there isn't really an Argentine cultural presence, history or population, and no one living there is really taking anything away from Argentina, then surely it's up to the people who live there to decide what they want?

Despite the proximity, there's never actually been an Argentine colony there, with attempts at them not lasting more than a few months, and even Spanish and French ones didn't last too long.

Do any Argentinians actually want to go and live on the Falklands? Let's say, hypothetically, that sovereignty did pass over to Argentina. Aside from, say, a few farmers who were wealthy enough to set up there, who'd want to live there? Are there people who are saying they would? There's no diaspora on the mainland, no Argentines with 'Malvinas heritage'. Argentina originally wanted the islands as a prison colony.

I suspect the islands value as something to posture over is far more valuable than actual sovereignty. And that goes for both sides.

I don't know, wasn't there an asian island wich was under british power not long ago, and that was ultimately given back to it's original "owners"??

If you mean Hong Kong, it was leased from the Chinese and given back when the lease ran out, a very different situation.

There were British living on the Falklands before Argentina gained independence, so it can hardly be seen as "giving it back", and who would we be giving it back to? The descendants of another bunch of colonialists?

The claim over Malvinas is a very old conflict, long before the war. And, yes, it has been used for political purposes mostly. But, imagine having a guy who lives in a big ass mansion, 5 blocks from where you live, claiming that, I don't know, your fence is his! "Oh, look, this piece of dirt is just this close from your territory, but is actually mine. Look at these dirty old papers, almost unreadable, they say I'm right!". So, yeha, the claim has been an issue among our population for over 100 years. Fact.

I didn't say there wasn't a claim being made by Argentina - just that the claim isn't compelling. And, honestly, "this land is near us = it's ours" isn't very compelling. There's quite a lot of land within 290 miles of Argentina; most of Chile, for instance.

For the record, it's really weird to be agreeing with a British foreign policy decision.

Out of interest, does the Argentine government have a position on the independence of Taiwan (ROC) from China (PRC)?

For many Argentines, their country's claim of sovereignty over the Falkland Islands, or Malvinas as they are called in Spanish, is clear.Recent opinion polls suggest that two-thirds of the population support this view.Amid such strong backing for the government's position, dissenting voices find it hard to engage debate."I'm not really bothered about the claim over the Malvinas. I don't think it changes much to have them [as part of Argentina] or not," says historian Luis Alberto Romero."What does worry me is the rise of a nationalistic feeling that can cause traumas in our society," he says, referring to public support for the country's military regime when it decided to invade the South Atlantic islands in 1982.